Reach out and touch someone
by LadyNightRunner
Summary: Marlene has a unique way of remembering people. She thinks of their hands, and she reads them by their hands. Follow her on a memory of all the people who have touched her life.


Here's another little bit, just like Fruit Salad. This stemmed from nowhere. LIke it? The one on smells will be up soon.

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Marlene remembers people by their hands. She always has. Even now, when her friends and loved ones are scattered across the planet, she can remember them as if their hands had touched her hours instead of days or weeks ago. All she has to do is close her eyes.

Tifa comes first. Always. She is the one who always picks Marlene up when she's fallen or sleepy or having a bad day. Her hands a touch, but she keeps them soft with lotion and the leather gloves she fights in. Hand's like Tifa's can do anything; bandage a cut, wipe away tears, make dinner, and throw rowdy drunks out the door.

Barrett's hands. Daddy's hands. They've been mismatched for as long as Marlene has known him, but she supposes he must have had two flesh and blood hands at some point. His human hand is callused and hard form years of hard work, but it's big and warm and friendly all the same. The robotic hand of his gun-arm can be gentle, but it's always cold. Still, they're both Barrett and Marlene doesn't mind.

One would assume that Cloud's hand some next, but it's always Denzel that Marlene remembers next. His hands are small like hers, and usually grubby, sticky, or hiding something. They hold her hand to and from school and help her do homework. Those hands also make fists to protect her.

Cloud's hands aren't home as often as Marlene would like. When they are, they usually arrive tired, cold, and cramped from long hours on Fenrir. On days that they come home at a reasonable hour, Marlene helps warm them up. Cloud's hands a re small, for a man's hands, but they're quick and strong. They're rough from hard work and patterned with scars from his sword. The kind of hands that can calm with a single touch.

Vincent has hands like Barrett, most of the time; one real and one metal. Twice, Marlene has seen the hand under the metal gauntlet he wears, once at hot springs in Wutai and once when he was confined to a bed for four days because of a fever. Both of Vincent's hands are long-fingered, pale, and smell perpetually of gunpowder. When the situation calls for it, they can do anything, even braid Marlene's hair.

Cid's hands were once rough and scarred, but time and work has worn them smooth. They're like leather, tough and supple. His hands aren't graceful or pretty; they're blocky and heavy. Cid's hands can fix anything, be it a broken shelf, a broken toy, or a leaky sink. Like Cid, they're always warm and waiting.

When he kidnapped her, Loz's hands were rough and scarred, the way Tifa's would have been if she didn't wear gloves when she fought. Despite his rough attitude, his hands were gentle. They weren't at all like Kadaj's hands, which were patched with scars and calluses from handling his sword. He hadn't been using it long enough for his hands to have grown used to it, and Marlene was sure they hurt. They matched his nature- to his brothers, Kadaj was curt and sometimes rude. With Marlene, he was harsh and cruel. The extremes between Kadaj and Loz were balanced out by Yazoo and his hands. They were soft and smooth, protected by gloves but terribly strong, with an unbreakable grip. Yazoo was unpredictable, gentle one moment and rough the next, as though he wasn't sure how to handle Marlene.

Marlene thinks Sephiroth's hands would be big and quick, smoothly callused and well taken care of. Hands that, like Loz's, could be used for better things.

Reno's hands are fun. On nights when he drinks in a booth instead of at the bar, sometimes Tifa lets Marlene carry drinks to him. When she's quick, his long, pale, bony hands pull coins out of thin air for her. His knuckles are usually scarred, and the nails are chewed short. Fighting hands. A thief's hands. They've fought with and against Tifa and Cloud, and, while they've done terrible things, they're good hands now.

Tseng has solemn hands. Marlene doesn't see them very often, because Tseng rarely visits 7th Heaven, but when she does see them, they're clean and well cared for. Like Tifa's hands, they're tough but soft. These hands are graceful; like a hawk, each movement is smooth, beautiful, and potentially deadly.

Yuffie's hands are tiny and fiendishly quick. They have calluses, but flexible ones. Yuffie's hands can get into anything. They're playful and friendly and they never fail to produce something, be it candy or toys or a pretty rock, to make Marlene smile.

Marlene has seen and felt Rufus Shinra's hands only once, right after the Jenova incident, at Tifa's celebration of the end of the Geostigma epidemic. His hands were soft, pampered, but there were scars from when the ShinRa Building fell, and a rough callus where a pen would rest. His hands are the kind Marlene has: full of potential.


End file.
